


The Continental Divide: or, On Your Hundred-and-First Birthday

by Gunderpants



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Swearing, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 23:50:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2600894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunderpants/pseuds/Gunderpants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks have an increasingly intimate discussion upstairs as his birthday party rages on downstairs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Continental Divide: or, On Your Hundred-and-First Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2005 for the rl_nt_ficathon. To this point I thought it had been deleted off the net. After giving it a bit of a scrub up, I am glad it wasn't.

**11.43**

"You know," he said, pulling his friend into a one-armed hug, "this the first party that anyone's ever thrown me?"

"That's not true," Sirius slurred, poking Remus in the chest and burying his finger into an intercostal muscle which immediately cause his friend to double over in pain. "What 'bout your sixteenth, eh?"

"You and Peter and James got put in detention fifteen minutes before the party was due to start and never even turned up," Remus wheezed, rubbing at his wounded chest. "How was I to explain, to all and sundry and their girlfriends, that my friends were too lousy to even show their faces? On my own birthday, too. God, I swear, Lily spent at least forty minutes making fun of me for being such a loner."

"Pish. Semantics. Y'know, this really is a nice vintage," said Sirius as he raised his bottle into the air, yellow wine spilling out over the top. Remus relieved him of the bottle, turning it around and examining it under the dull gas light.

"Of course. Because nothing screams 'decadence' like wine that has a use-by date printed on the bottom."

"That's not true, there's no..." Sirius turned the bottle over, spilling half the contents on the parlour carpet. "Shit. Expired now too."

"Smells like cat piss."

"Pedant."

"Lush." Over Sirius' head, he could see a vision of blue taffeta and pink hair ambling towards them, and what looked like the largest brandy balloon full of beer. His eyesight had all been lost by the sheer quantities of alcohol drunk, but it was only fair to say he wasn't the drunkest: at least an hour earlier, someone'd had to escort Dedalus Diggle to Saint Mungo's, as they suspected he was suffering an advanced state of alcohol poisoning, and he had his suspicions that upstairs somewhere, Mundungus Fletcher was making sweet love to a bear-skin rug.

"Oy, you gents," said Tonks, tripping over on the edge of the runner. Sirius snorted at her, and she responded with a swift kick in the shins. "Shut up, you. We going to have any speeches or anything? It's just, everyone's getting a bit rowdy, is all."

"Right you are, little lady," said Sirius, as he hoisted himself atop a table. With the riding boots, long hair and untucked white shirt, Remus couldn't help but see a hint of the pirate coming out in his friend. "Right, you lot! Shut up." Everyone turned to look at him, some squinting more than others.

"D'you want me to get the present ready?" whispered Tonks, tugging on his pants leg.

"Cheers, love," he said, giving her a chance to slip out of the room before turning back to address the hoards. "Right, as you all know, we've been gathered here for a very special occasion, for a very special person. But he couldn't make it, and it's Lupin's birthday anyway." He reached down, clapping Remus on the shoulder. "He's not a bad bloke, this one. Bit of a prude, but an all-right sort of bloke. Always in it for the long-haul, and you know I've had problems with quitters over the last couple of years. And so tonight, as he enters his... how old are you again?"

"A hundred and one."

"Piss off."

"All right. Thirty-six."

"Splendid. On his thirty-sixth birthday, we salute him for being the nicest bastard we know."

Everyone in the room raised their glasses, shakily, except for Kingsley Shacklebolt, who raised an entire cask of wine.

"And now, old man, we've organised a little treat for you. You'll need to keep your pants on, of course, but we'll understand if you have to duck into the bathroom after seeing it. Oy, Kingsley! Music!"

"Right, right." Kingsley fiddled with the old record player, swearing quietly as he tried putting the record on upside down.

"You want a hand with that?"

"You sit down, this is your birthday present. Right. You ready in there?" he called out beyond the doorframe.

"Yep," replied a young female voice. Kingsley nodded, and lowered the needle.

It was as if a ghastly nightmare had come to play: the room lights had dimmed, the brass band had started playing a bawdy song, and shimmying into the room, clad in silk pants and a beaded bra-top, was what looked like Dolores Umbridge, shaking in time to the music, her stomach spilling over the top of her pants and a ridiculous little veil covering her face. Remus forced out a laugh, uncomfortable with how close she was coming to him. Everyone in the room was in fits of laughter as he burying his face in his hands, 'Umbridge' approaching him and waggling her posterior in an attempt to be attractive.

"Give 'im a lapdance!" shrieked Sirius, who looked like he was swinging from a light fixture and brandishing his almost-empty bottle of wine. Remus shook his head in horror and disbelief, a nervous smile wide on his face as he brandished his arms in defence. Despite Remus' loud pleas for mercy, he found himself an unwilling victim of what could've been the singular most un-sexy - and were he sober, likely to be the most terrifying - dance he'd ever witnessed. Though he laughed, along with everyone else in the room the panic alarms sounded in his mind as he felt her break into his fiercely guarded physical proximity.

"Stop, please, I swear!" he pleaded, tears streaming down his face and his sides aching from laughter. "I promise, I'll do anything, pay anything!"

"Oy, oy, Tonks," sad Kingsley. "Give him a kiss."

"No, really, I don't think that's at all necessar--" He was cut off, alas, by a tongue plunging into his mouth, and chubby hands squeezing his cheeks to prevent him from pulling away. He groaned in agony, skinny arms flailing all over the place, and eventually pried his cruel captor off him. He wiped his mouth furiously, his face pale and his hair messed up, feeling sicker and more sober than he had all night, and he felt conscious of the eyes fixated upon him: laughing, expectant, jeering. He was not easy with the attention, and jauntily laughed, as if to dispel the awkwardness in the air.

"Oh, I'll never wash my mouth again," he said, aiming to sound breezy but instead belying his nerves and embarrassment.

"D'you like that, Remus?" said 'Umbridge', her hair turning pink and her proportions shrinking to a far more palatable size. Tonks was now clutching at the pants around her waist, pressing the bra-top to her far-smaller frame. "Pity nobody brought a camera along."

"Oh, I'm sure the memory is indelible now," he responded, wiping the tears from his eyes. "There's no way I'll be able forget that."

"Can we get back to drinking now?" said Hestia Jones from the back of the room, a frilly paper hat on her head and Elphias Doge hanging around her waist.

"Yeah, all right, everyone piss off."

**12.05**

"You right in here?"

He'd hoped she wouldn't find him in here. He'd hidden in the library on the second floor, on the ground in front of a tall-backed sofa, gathering his nerves and steeling his will against the prospect that someone would stumble into the room, fingers pointed angrily at him and demanding that he return to a room full of people ready to clap him on the shoulder and congratulate him on his manliness. Of course, Remus thought it all a sham because he perceived himself to have next to no manliness whatsoever: he'd often pondered as to whether God, in the creation process, had left him with strawberry jam in the place of testosterone.

It would have to be her, with her persistence and cheeriness and not showing any shame or restraint, to sniff him out. He smiled weakly to Tonks, who took this as an invitation to plonk herself down on the sofa right above him, so that he was directly between her legs. He chilled a little at the thought of how close he was to her, and pulled himself away slightly to avoid making contact with her skin.

"You all right about before, chicken?"

"What? Yeah. Not a problem. I... er, see, I thought I was about to vomit. Needed a lie-down and a breather."

"Hmm. Right."

"I didn't have bad breath when you kissed me, did I?" Remus said, with a false-breezy tone of voice.

"Couldn't really tell. You tasted like peach schnapps."

"Excellent. I wasn't bad or anything, was I?"

"You're really tetchy about this, aren't you?"

His breath paused for a minute at the back of his throat, and he tried to think of a way to deflect the suspicion, eventually falling back on the stock standard "not really."

"You're all jumpy. Look at you."

"I'm not jumpy. See? I'm actually about to fall asleep."

"No, no, don't do that! Don't pike out on your birthday, you only hit your immediately post-mid-thirties once."

"Thanks for reminding me."

"I didn't mean it like that. Come on, stay awake. You want another drink?"

"What's on offer?"

He felt her shift behind him, her left thigh pressed into his face a little more than normal. The satin slid along his cheek, and he felt his face flush. "There's a bottle of something over on the sideboard, I think Dung might've left it there." She jumped up, stepping over his head and moving over to a discouragingly yellow bottle on the sideboard. She'd resorted to tying the overly-large bra top so it wouldn't slip off her, he noticed, because when she turned around again the cups had shifted to barely cover her at all - not that there was much to cover.

"Spatlese lexia." She turned it around, peering in at the small print. "Nineteen ninety six."

"Great year for the fruity lexia."

"You're a fruity lexia," she said, sitting down behind him again and hooking her calf between his legs. "Oy, sorry!"

"It's all right. I never intended to have children anyway."

"Oh, good. You want to do the honours or shall I?"

"Go for it."

She uncapped the bottle, taking a swig from it. "To Remus, who is really really ridiculously old."

"Thanks."

She had another sip and passed it down to him. He saw a ring of pink lipstick on the rim, and he wiped at it a bit, tilting the bottle and letting the wine flow down his throat.

"This stuff is bloody revolting," she said, with a twisted-up face.

"Yeah, I know. James and I stole an entire case of it for Peter's birthday the year after we finished school. He made a sporting attempt of it, too. Two and a bit bottles down and he nearly choked to death on his own vomit." Remus took another sip, frowning at the bottle and passing it back to her. "He was a good sport like that, Pete."

"Oh." She was quiet for a minute, and he could tell that she was weighing up the positives and negatives of continuing along that same strand of conversation. Eventually, the need to fill the space with inane sound ate her up. "Can you play with my hair for me?"

"What?"

She jumped off the chair, standing in front of him and trying to pull him up. "You sit up on the couch."

"Why?"

"You can plait my hair."

"I don't know how."

She bullied him onto the chair, taking a seat between his legs. "Just divide my hair into three pieces, like this." She pulled the hair from out of his fingers and started twisting them into a plait. His eyes, however, hardly noticed her fingers and hair, as they were transfixed on her vertebra sticking out from under her skin, and he wondered whether they would be hard to touch, or the skin coarse and dense like his or far, far finer. It was a most unusual milky white, devoid of freckles, and her hair came to halfway down her back. "Go on, you try."

"My hands might touch you."

"I don't mind. So long as they're not dirty or cold it doesn't matter."

He hesitated, then capitulated, unwilling for the consequences of denying her. Her hair was thicker and coarser than he'd imagined: it was softer than doll's hair, but not by much, as if she were trying to make her hair look distinctively wiglike. It was easier to touch her now that he'd taken the plunge, and he'd even worked up the courage to stammer: "your hair, erm... it looks nicer long, anyway."

She didn't say anything, but just bit a fingernail. He wasn't particularly good at plaiting, and when he leant back for a minute saw how awful he'd made it look: the hair clumped at odd angles, stray hairs sticking out at right angles and one side of it crooked. But he merely fastened it with the elastic, biting his lip in concentration. His little finger scraped against the back of her neck, and she shivered. He pulled back for a second, his face red, but after a couple of seconds she leant back again, pulling the plait over her shoulder and playing with the ends.

He felt a little sad, looking at her unblemished skin and thick plait and tiny frame contrasted against the coarseness of his own skin and lankiness. It was less than a generation between the two of them, but she seemed like she was from another world to him: a world of different colloquialism and propriety, separated like continents and era. She looked like a doll, with her delicate features and pink hair and clothes that hung from her frame without fitting, and it made him feel all the more human in his skin.

"Your breath is all hot."

"Sorry." He leant back, trying to aim his breath above her.

"It's not a bad thing. It smells like peaches. It was warm."

"Aren't you cold in that?"

"No." She shifted below him, fiddling with the straps of the top. Her shoulders were fine and narrow, and she rubbed at her slender arms, the hairs sticking on end. "It's warm in here. D'you ever get that, where you drink lots and you don't even need a jacket or anything in the middle of winter?"

"Sometimes."

She leant her head against his thigh, closing her eyes. "And then you go sober again, and you become all cold and tense and edgy, and you just want to curl up into a little ball and go to sleep."

He didn't reply at first, as his stomach and lungs had managed to entangle themselves into a massive knot at the base of his organ cavity at the feel of her head against his thigh, finally breaking that continental divide that they'd been skirting around the entire evening. He'd forgotten the last time someone had voluntarily entered his personal space, the barriers of which he liked to keep at a good arm's length. It was endemic of her generation, however, that personal barriers were a purely optional thing. By the look of things, it was an option which she had likely given little consideration to. She was picking at the hem of his trousers, humming quietly to herself, and for minute he considered resting his hand on her head. But the fear of communicating a patronising vibe, or an overtly sexual one, overrode his sensibilities, and he tucked his hand into the cushions of the seat.

"I can feel the music through the floor," she whispered. "They should turn it down, the neighbours might hear something."

"It's all right. There are enchantments preventing that."

"Oh. Because sometimes I worry, with Sirius crashing about the house and teasing Buckbeak. It gets a bit rowdy here, sometimes. I suppose you'd be used to it."

"I'm not used to it," he said, staring at a strand of hair that had come loose and was now curled against her pretty white skin, "but it feels so... normal. Do you know what I mean?"

She turned around, her hand on his knee. "Yeah, I do! Like how... hang on. I can't put it into words."

"It happens."

"Yeah, but it happens all the time to me, like my mouth is faster than my brain and I just lose what I'm trying to say." The strand of hair fell in front of her mouth, and she blew at it furiously. He was so tempted to lean forward and pin it back into the elastic that he leant forward, but backed off at the last moment.

"You all right?"

"Pardon?"

"You're all twitchy tonight, aren't you?"

"I-- I don't think so, I haven't noticed--"

She looked down at her hand on his knee. "I'm not making you uncomfortable, am I?"

"No," he lied, "not in the slightest."

As if his words were an open invitation, she lowered her head back onto his knee. She twisted the loose strand of hair between her fingers, sucking on the end, and he felt his guts petrifying again.

"You all right up there?" she said, the hair sticking out the corner of her mouth, and he nodded weakly. "Tell me if I'm getting too close."

There was no way in hell he could vocalise those words himself: firstly, because he was sure that his tongue was firmly glued to the back of his mouth, and secondly, for the first time, he felt like maybe he didn't want to close the door of his barriers: that he'd let them down for a purpose, and could resurrect them again if needed. It felt like uncharted territory: that any hormonal or emotional response would feel completely foreign to him, and he was so far beyond the point of proper sobriety that every brush of the skin was amplified to eleven, like his flesh would burst and melt. He wanted to reply with something intelligent, or witty, or warm, letting her know that no, he was fine with it all: yes, she could come closer: yes, it felt nice. So nice. But to the consternation of his greater sensibilities, all he could manage was "it's not good to chew on your hair, you know."

She smiled at him, sucking on the strand some more, as if to challenge him to do something about it. He stared at her for a minute, then plucked it out of her mouth. She smirked again, and in went the strand, the ends slick with her saliva. She raised her eyebrows, leaning her arm on his leg and giving him that beguiling Black charm he'd known too well.

"What're you going to do about that?"

He closed his eyes, breathing in deeply through his nose. His hands felt twice the normal size, and his chest had started to tighten around his lungs. He leant down to her, his hand reached out. "Can I--"

"You don't have to ask my permission."

He took the strand in his fingers, twisting it around a bit, the saliva cold and clammy against his fingertips. He tried lifting the hair around behind her ear, but found his hand following along her jawbone. He saw the skin on her arms goose-pimple, and heard her take in the most minute breath of air. He let his hand remain there for a few seconds, noting how fragile the skin was, and soft as well. With the shakiest voice, he asked her: "can I touch somewhere else?"

It worried him that she nodded, even without knowing where he wanted to touch: like she was acknowledging that he probably would touch anywhere, no matter his own private morals. He closed his eyes, and let his hand slowly move around from the back of her ear, over her shoulders and in the crook of her neck, and down over to the fine, protruding bones of her spine. She gave a more visible shudder this time, moving her head closer up his thigh to let his hand have access to her back.

"I wanted to see what your back felt like," he said, immediately regretting how desperate and awkward it must've sounded.

"Mmm," she moaned, the sound coming out at the volume of a whisper.

"Do you want me to... you know, if you want--"

"Don't stop."

"I..." The words eluded him, and he simply took in a deep breath, leaving his hand lingering there until he pulled it away, shamefully, a few second later. His fingertips and palm burned, and he wiped the sweat from his hands.

She sighed quietly, and turned back to him with a coy smile. "I could smell you more, then. You smell nice, like peaches."

"Isn't that a sign of cyanide poisoning?"

"No. Almonds."

"Right. Keep in mind that I failed potions in OWL year."

"Mm?"

"Hated it."

"Yeah. Come sit on the ground."

"Erm..." He saw her shift forward, the baggy satin pants falling lower down her waist, and she pulled the drawstring tighter. She looked so little that night, with her arms wrapped around her legs and the bagginess of the pants exaggerating a tiny waist and bony, protruding hip bones. The waist of the pants had fallen lower, and he glimpsed, for the merest of seconds, the top of her underwear: plain white cotton, no frills, loose elastic. It was enough to stop his breath dead in his throat for a few seconds, but nonetheless he lowered himself to the ground behind her.

She pulled her plait forward, inspecting the ends. "You're not very good at braiding hair, you know."

"Do I win?"

"No, you don't win."

"Oh."

"All right, you win, I suppose."

"Outstanding. I never really get too many chances to plait hair, you realise. My mum caught me trying to plait a mop when I was six, though. She never really trusted me again after that."

"Families are petty like that, you know," she said. "I remember one of our family Christmas': it would've been Draco's first Christmas, and for some reason our family was invited. It was awful. Bellatrix made certain to lavish all these presents on Draco, just ignoring the fact that I was there. It was just to get at my mother, I know it. Mum cracked the shits, she nearly belted Aunty Bella across the face."

He laughed, softly, and raised the nearly empty bottle of wine. "A toast, then. To finding the mongrels, the scoundrels and the spivs who are as good as family to us."

"To the mongrels."

**2.56**

Below their room, the bacchanalia raged: glass crashing, as Sirius and Kingsley were challenging each other to a bottle-hurling competition; heavy footsteps, and interminably loud music. The study felt like the eye of the storm: though the sound still made its way through the floorboards, and the windows did nothing to dull the sounds of vomiting and carousing outside, there was a heavy warm peace to the room.

They'd been playing with the candle for twenty minutes now: dripping the wax onto the carpet (knowing full-well how much Mrs Black would shriek in horror), dipping their fingers into it while still hot and wet, and letting it cool on their fingertips. They'd started on the third bottle with relish, and he was already feeling sleepy and content, though with a warmth and a knotted stomach that he couldn't piece together. In the dim light, her pale skin glowed, translucent, the fine blue veins coursing down her torso leading his eyes to the bottom of her stomach.

"I bet you could make little finger shields with these. Did you ever used to do that as a kid?" she said, as she picked a bit of wax out from under her fingernail.

"I think everyone did. I used to dip the match in the wax and try and write things with the wax before it dried."

"Hmm. Write me a letter." She was spread out on her back, no longer even bothering to ensure the satin pants were staying up. "Write a letter to me on my stomach."

He stared at her, his palms sweating. "Pardon?"

She ran a finger over her belly, lazily, a laconic smile on her face. "Tell me something, anything. Write me a story, a confession, a love letter."

The only thing leading his hand to her stomach was the alcohol. He had the feeling that if his sober self were to travel back in time and catch him in the act, he would be slapped over the wrist and head for his daringness, leaving him both smarting and utterly bewildered. He paused, swallowing the lump to clear his throat. Tonks didn't seem to notice his hesitancy, her eyes watching his hand.

"What do you want it to say?" he said, with a slight crack in his voice.

"Something nice."

He smiled at her, his hands shaking slightly with the matchstick between his fingers. "Well, I'm not very nice, so I don't know how I'll go about it."

She slapped him on the leg. "Oh, shush. Write me something."

He stuck the stick into the candle, and shook it to remove the excess wax. He hesitated above her body, the fine, pale hairs standing on end, and lowered it onto her skin. She shivered a little, and giggled as he traced a letter across her belly.

"What's so funny?"

"Mm, feels nice. Do you have any muscles?"

"Yes, I believe so. It would be incredibly difficult for me to mobilise without them."

"Stupid. I mean, are they big muscles? Like, are they decent?"

"Oh, I have no muscle bulk or tone whatsoever. I could be beaten up by a girl, really."

"Hmm. I have no muscles either. We could join forces, you know, and make an invincible team of crime fighters with ridiculously low levels of fitness."

He snorted. "Can you guess what I'm writing?"

"Erm, 'my name is Remus, and I am a gigantic loser'?"

"Yes. Christ, you're good."

"Really?"

"No."

"Oh. I could feel the letter A, I think--"

"It was an H. Bugger, hang on for a second, bloody matchstick... Right. Hold still again, you silly girl, I can't write something if you keep shaking like that."

"Getting cold."

"I would be too, if I were in pyjama pants and a bra."

"I think you'd look lovely in a bra."

"Thank you."

"Would you like to try mine on?"

"But what would that leave you in?"

"I can cover them with my hands, you know," she said, her words slurred and a coquettishly drunk smile playing on her lips. "You just have to promise not to look at me when I take it off."

"If there's anything a catholic grandmother is responsible for, it's that you believe your eyes will be burnt out if you see anything sinful. She used to tell me that if you touch yourself, you go blind."

"Do you think that's true?"

"What do you think?"

"Not blind yet," she said.

It took him a while to grasp what she meant, but only a nanosecond after that for the mental image to appear in his mind. "Oh."

She opened her eyes again and looked at him. "You know, if I embarrass you with any of this stuff, just tell me to stop, because sometimes I go too far when I'm drunk, I know, I'm not like this usually, I promise--"

"Sh. I know you're not."

"But really, I don't go around saying these things normally, you're probably going to think I'm this ridiculously nymphomanic little slag who won't shut up--"

She was lying on her side now, facing him, the little strand of hair back in her mouth and she was shaking like mad, though if it was from the cold he did not know. It felt easier this time to gather the courage to push the hair out of her face, but the knot in his stomach and the blood rushing through his head felt intensified, if anything, from the alcohol in his system: heating every inch of his extremities, burning his ears and making his eyelids feel very heavy indeed. She pushed her face into his hand, her eyes wide and sad, and he let his hand rest on her cheek for a minute, her skin soft and velvety. Her shaking slowed.

"Do you want me to get you a drink of water?"

"Do you think I'm a slag? Should I go put something on?"

"No. You're all right."

She lay quietly for minute, before reaching for his hand. It was such a girl's hand, he thought to himself: small, clean, dry, soft. "Lie down next to me?"

He feared she would see the catch in his breath, the flush in his skin and the clamminess of his hand. She was so keen to have him invade her space:

"Yeah." As he lowered himself down, he felt his joints cracking, and the floor hard against his back. "Ouch." He lay beside her on his back, head tilted in her direction. She was facing him still, and he could feel her breath on the side of his neck, tingling at his ears and cooling his burning skin.

"It feels weird to have your head up with mine, y'know, because you're usually a lot taller than me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She fingered a patch of rug in front of her, biting her lip and inspecting his face intently. "You have pretty eyes."

He laughed, quietly, uncertain how to take the compliment. "So do you."

She blushed, and let her hand creep up to touch his arm. Her eyes were so doe-like: big, and brown, and liquid, so sad and pretty, so nicely framed with heavily mascara'd lashes. There was no barrier between his gaze and hers: she never shifted them uneasily like he did, to avoid an unbroken line of unspoken communication. "He didn't like to talk like this. My ex-boyfriend."

"Oh?"

"Funny that. He was one of those 'nice guys'. You know the sort: spend more time trying to say that they're a nice guy than they do doing nice things for people."

"Oh, well, you don't have to worry about that from me, love. I've got chopped up bodies down in the cellar. I haven't any time for niceties."

She rubbed at her eyes, angrily, and without thinking he moved his hand to touch her face. She opened her eyes before he reached her, however, and pulled away without her noticing.

She blinked hard, swirling her eyes in their sockets as if trying to cause her tears to dissolve. "They're bastards like that, fucking men. They're predators, they just hone in on your weak spot and before you know it they've fucked you over in more ways than one."

The silence rang for a minute as he stared at the ceiling, and he felt her moving closer to him, pressing her body against the side of his. "What did he do? I mean - I don't want to pry, you don't have to answer--"

"Just stupid bloke shit, really. You let them in, show them all of you, every side, and they manipulate and use it until they're spent with you and they just want to chuck you to the side to get to something new. They find out that you can look however you want and before you know it, they want you to be ex-girlfriends, or slutty girls they see out in the street, or whatever tarty image takes their fancy, and it's like they no longer want you for you, you see, but what you can give them."

He wondered, for a moment, if he should touch her hand, or stroke her head, or show any form of sympathy, but he felt her slip her hand under his. "I hate them," she said, tugging at her bra strap. "I hate how they'd ask you to look like a sixteen year old, or how they'd tell you to lose weight, or put it on. Like me being what I am is carte blanche for them to never be happy with who you are, because it would never stop with what you look like, but how you talk and what you say and what you think about certain things." She pulled her hand out from under his, turning his hand over so his palm faced upwards and drawing circles on it with her little finger.

He swallowed, and his stomach knotted again. "I... erm... you... I... God. No, fuck them, seriously. I... you are lovely as you are, you really are, I couldn't give a shit. Um, not that I don't care, or anything, but... shit, I've shot myself in the foot, haven't I?

He felt her breath pausing against his neck. "Thank you," she said, quietly and with her characteristically disarming candidness.

"You don't have to thank me. I just... um... look, just ignore me, I don't know quite what I'm saying anymore."

"Mm." She lay still and quiet now, and in his peripheral vision he could see a shy little smile on her lips. "Are you still drunk?"

"Never was in the first place."

"Liar. I feel sick."

"Oh." He sat bolt upright, the blood rushing from his head, and he looked down at her. "Jesus, do you want me to open the window or something?"

"No, it'll pass. Lie back down with me."

He hesitated, looking down at her as she played with her hair sleepily. "Look, I don't--"

"D'you remember the first time we met? You asked me if I knew a cure for salmonella, because Sirius and Dung had eaten entire poisoned chickens and you were at your wits' end."

He laughed, the acid in his stomach churning. "I hadn't slept for forty-eight hours straight when you came in."

"Mm. I just liked how normal and unpretentious you were, how you didn't try to bullshit or impress me."

"I didn't creep you out or anything with the dressing gown?"

"You know what," she said, curling her arm around him and yawning, "you are nowhere nearly as seedy or depraved or awful as you think you are. You'll give yourself an ulcer one day if you keep going along those lines." She settled herself against him, wrapping a leg around his and yawning again. "You're warm."

He didn't know whether this warmth was a direct result of alcohol abuse or the fireplace, or whether it had something to do with her hands fiddling with the bottom of his shirt. He didn't know either if the fluttering in his stomach was butterflies or his bile, ready to rise triumphant up his throat. And he didn't know whether she was trying, in vain, to cannibalise him with her lips or kiss him on the neck.

He didn't know what it said about himself that she was willing to approach him and spill her little heart out, even if it was on drunken whimsy. It spoke volumes about her, on the other hand, that she would open up her soul to him, and try and force his barriers down likewise, no matter his age, or awkwardness, or unemployment or proclivities for human flesh. It was hard for him to think that beside him lay, in a revealing bra top with running mascara and eye shadow and with her knickers on show to the world, the most decent and wonderful of women, who was actually touching him for reasons other than to deliver a fatal blow to the skull.

And as she lay there, her hand resting on his hip bone and her breathing shallow, he felt sad that a girl like her should be too naive, high-minded and optimistic for the likes of him. Being disenchanted was nothing to him: he'd been fucked from the outset, and learnt the hard way that the only way he wouldn't be disappointed was to set his standards low. But she was so young, and for all her experience with men was still so idealistic that it would be cruel to ruin it. She wasn't bitter or cynical, like so many other young women, and in their circumstances her cheeriness and complete lack of prejudice was something he wanted to hold onto for as long as he could, in the palm of his hand, just watching reverently while the world around him disintegrated.

"I like you," she said, her voice sleepy and uncharacteristically soft and breaking his heart a little bit, "even if you are anally retentive."

His heart stopped. He couldn't bring himself to look at her, out of worry that she would see the fear and apprehension in his face. Her hand was on his torso, and her breath was on his neck, and her nose was only slightly nudging his ear. His skin burned, and his stomach stirred, and a million thoughts buzzed through his head like angry bees, but the only thing that seemed real to him was the emptiness in his stomach at the realisation that no matter whether he reciprocated her feelings or not, she was only going to be deeply, deeply disappointed.

When he turned back to her, his lips open and the words at the back of his throat, he saw her closed eyes and shallow breaths and bemoaned his inopportune timing. He felt her hand twitch on his hip as her muscles relaxed, and soon the alcoholic breeze on his neck grew slow and heavy. He lay on his side and let his chin rest on her head, pink hairs sticking to his lips and his eyelids growing tingly and heavy.

He knew that in the morning there was a ninety percent chance of her laughing, awkwardly, and saying that nothing really happened and they were both drunk anyway so it wouldn't matter or change anything. More to the point, he knew there was a one hundred percent chance of him being violently hung-over. But he swept back her fringe and kissed her on the forehead, playing with the loose strand of hair again and feeling as though he really was a hundred-and-one years old.


End file.
